For Persephone - Chapter 58 – After Story (6) | 19

“Naturally, I assumed you were sleeping.”

“Hello.”

“I guess you were in the middle of eating something; am I disturbing you? You aren’t angry, right?”

The goddess of death and destruction had a hell of an ego. Persephone smiled faintly and lifted the fruit back up.

“I won’t scold you. You want one, Cer?”

Ceres’ lips quivered. “It looks delicious but I don’t want to eat it. More than that, if I drink that nectar…” Soon, however, a look began to spread over her face, and she became quiet. Ceres, who had been yapping nonstop, shut her mouth.

“Where is Hades at? I heard you were on guard duty in Pandena. You’re back already?”

Ceres had not forgotten about the previous incident; she had been sent to another underworld region under Hades’ orders as soon as she recovered.

By the time she had awakened, Hades had already taken Persephone as his own and even kidnapped her, so she didn’t know the full truth about the two. So, she had quietly gone on her mission, and now she was back.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Persephone asked her/

“….”

“Like I’m your enemy or something.”

“You think I don’t know what you did, queen? Stealing Hades’ invisible cap and…”

Persephone, grinning low, shook her head. “Oh, I see that you’re still clinging onto old things.”

Ceres, looking at the shape of Persephone’s mouth, clenched her jaw. Then her gaze fell on the bloody cloth on the table.

“What’s that blood?”

Persephone calmly looked into her eyes and smiled refreshingly. “I know you feel uncomfortable just looking at it.”

“….”

“I’m leaving Hades here alone soon to go back above ground for half a year. I can’t help being a human being, the life is so beautiful. I was hoping things would work out a little bit. Just a tiny bit.”

“What are you talking about?”

Persephone, who ignored Ceres’ question, slowly pushed in her chair and stood up. And grabbed the knife again that she’d tossed away.

“But now that it’s been settled, you’ve crawled back into his—my— palace.”

After flashing a picture-esque smile, a cruel and fierce possessiveness was lurking inside her that no Titan could ever possess. An evil so deep that it would cut Ceres from head to toe if she were to cross the line. Ceres shrugged her shoulders and backed away.

*

When it came about time for Persephone to leave, Hades was caught up with anxiety and disbelief that just filled his heart. He didn’t know what she’d lie about and sometimes suspected that she was a woman who could even fool Styx. He on the other hand couldn’t do that.

The greater the volume of love he had for her, the greater his anxiety and the less certain he had for her. No, now it would be right to call it an obsession created by anxiety.

Persephone went up to him and hugged him softly.

“You’re here, Hades. I was wondering if you’d come or not…”

He slowly caressed her cheeks and rubbed her lips, then he took a gentle breath and looked into her eyelids, which remained closed. She had been longing for him the whole time she was above ground, and he had cried out for poor Persephone and felt sad without her every single day.

“You did something good for that married couple. So smile.”

Hades still occasionally recalled that day. Persephone’s tiny island—the moment he’d wrecked her nest. He couldn’t stand it when she stood up like a fire. The thought of giving up on a little girl that he wanted to hold for the first time in hundreds of years didn’t even exist in his mind at first. Perhaps it was from the moment they’d first looked into each other’s eyes. It may have been from the day when he couldn’t move as if a brass nail had nailed him down.

A prelude to falling for a woman’s mockery and swearing eternity on the Styx River, which had become a reality.

Doubt seemed to last forever. Why she had, and still could, blindly loved and deceived him. Hades, who was caressing Persephone’s red cheeks, made an order with a stone-cold voice.

“Say you love me.”

“I love you. I can say it a million times. Up there, I love my mother the most, but in the underworld, I love you the most. So… Don’t forget me while I’m gone.”

“You’re mother might coerce you to something.”

“Don’t doubt that my heart will be shaken. Hades…”

All of a sudden, he stared at the cloth stained in red on the table.

“What’s that thing?”

“Oh, that?”

Persephone smiled calmly. Then grabbed Hades’ neck with both hands and kissed him.

“Pomegranate juice just bleeding through.”

A pomegranate split in half sparkled in her coveted eyes.

With a father, who raped her mother, in the skies, and a mother whom she loved and hated, the invisible world under their eyes was the most perfect cradle for Persephone. In this place lived the person who could replace her one and only mother’s affection. She was happy at once.

Tonight, a sinister night will be knocking at the door.

-THE END-

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